We tend only to see the glitz and glamour of the progaming scene. It’s hard to think that there’s anything but the shining surface of the GSL, MLG and DreamHack. It’s almost too easy to believe that progaming has become what it is today by being clean, always above the board and fair, but that would be a lie.

It’s all too easy to forget the seedy world of the underground SC2 tournaments, where players compete without shirts, their sponsors and team/gang insignia tattooed directly onto the white, near-translucent nerdflesh beneath.

The telltale Stimpack insignia indicates that this was resold to a budding progamer during his underground trial by fire.

Minds addled by the stimulants, teeth dissolving in an energy-drink acid-bath, the almost-there play game after game against the never-will-be. They need something to give them an edge, just this once, just so I can make it. In the world of PC bang basements, grime, dust and frequent power cuts, there can be no drug testing. Players crunch down Adderall and Ritalin as though there were no tomorrow, skin peeled back from feverish, unblinking eyes, hands riffling across the keyboard.

Hearts hit 300BPM.Hands hit 600APM.

Keyboards soak up the droplets of sweat and players burn out, but the best move on, they strive to become something more.

Note the general femininity of the progamer pictures above [face deliberately cropped to conceal identity at progamer's request].

Of course, the problem is that these players go pro, they make it, and once they’re there, they have to compete. If it takes more than they are just to get there, they’re necessitated to look further, always quest for something new, something undetectable, anything that will give them the edge. No Matter the Cost.*

Picture the scene, a coach and a progamer hash out the details of a strategy, but it’s not quite within his reach. They play the game out over and over, but every time he fails, something goes wrong. His harassment doesn’t work out, or when it does his macro slips, his drone production isn’t where it should be. He’s got the gamesense but the multitasking is off. He can’t do it.

Is this the increasingly feminine face of the modern game?

At the end of the day, tired and emotionally bankrupt, the two sit down to tea. The coach takes out a magazine, reads the words across the top of the page:

STUDIES SHOW WOMEN BETTER AT MULTI-TASKING

He reads it idly, but nothing comes of it, it’s a biological difference. He puts it aside, commiserates with his player, and the two go to bed. Hours later, in the dark and the heat, sweat soaking the pillow, the coach laughs in his sleep, a cold and a harsh laugh.

At exactly 0313, he wakes, bolt upright, and screams. He has found his answer. Estrogen exists naturally even in male bodies, it’d be difficult to screen for, and could augment his player’s multi-tasking. A plan begins to form.

Is this what we are teaching our children to become? This androgynous master race? This liminal not-quite-one-or-the-otherness?

Now, I won’t say that this was one particular coach, but I will say this: Is it some huge coincidence that GSL players have started looking so, shall we say, gender indeterminate lately?

In that light, is SlayerS Eve to be seen as the final evolution of this thought scheme? There are three schools of thought behind the acquisition of SlayerS Eve:

1. SlayerS has cracked the current metametagame in its acquisition of a progamer who is, in point of fact actually a woman. Her multitasking will be second-to-none, her decisions beyond anything to be made by estrogen-augmented males.

2. Eve was once a male progamer, but has been conditioned by years of hormone therapy to so great an extent that she is as we see her now, outwardly female.

3. Perhaps scariest of all, it has been suggested that SlayerS may have taken on a female progamer specifically for her rich quantities of natural estrogen, not so that she might be a successful progamer, but that they might draw the hormone from her and utilise it in the construction of a progamer master race, neither male nor female, but with the advantages of both. They dwell in two worlds and are master of each.

Is this the future of the foreign SC2 scene? What unspeakable horrors have we wrought?

Eventually, there comes a time when we have to ask, “Do we expect too much?” Are we asking our progamers to be more than they can possibly be? To be more than [i]just men? Are we forcing them to cross boundaries so firmly defined that the greek gods themselves railed against transgressions?

Has it come to the stage where we demand that players become something more than human?

Are we asking our progamers to sacrifice themselves at the altar of esports? If so, the blood is on our hands.

* Fun Fact: No Matter the Cost is the name of the Terran music from BW

there is little doubt in my mind that korean progamers use steroids for recovery(most likely prescribed legally by a doctor) because it is simply impossible to play 8 hours a day at 300 apm not not destroy your carpal tunnel nerves.

twitter.com/therealdhalism | "Trying out Z = lots of losses vs inferior players until you figure out how to do it well (if it even works)."- Liquid'Tyler

On August 10 2011 08:07 Sfydjklm wrote:there is little doubt in my mind that korean progamers use steroids for recovery(most likely prescribed legally by a doctor) because it is simply impossible to play 8 hours a day at 300 apm not not destroy your carpal tunnel nerves.

That's 144,000 actions per day! :O That actually is pretty intense :S

I arbitrarily wanted to know

Failure is not falling down over and over again. Failure is refusing to get back up.

On August 10 2011 08:31 Liquid`HuK wrote:good read but in all seriousness i would 100% suport drug testing in esports

Out of curiosity, is there any reason that there isn't drug testing done?

Admittedly, I don't know what the costs would be, but it seems like it's something that would allay a lot of (genuine) concerns.

On that note would drugs even help people play better? I mean really, even with the need for good control and apm it is still mostly a mental game.... I guess there might be things out there to enhance focus.